Scientists: Cats are able to recognize the facial expression of the owner

American scientists presented the results of the research, for the first time, strongly supporting the ability of cats to recognize the face of their owner.

Moriah Galvan and Jennifer Wonka from the Oakland Institute in Rochester, Michigan, United States studied the behavior of 12 cats and their owners. Researchers found that animals behave variously depending on were you smiling when their owner or frowning.

When the owner was smiling, cats have traditionally demonstrated a "useful" behavior: purred, rubbed, climbed to the man on his knees. Seems like they more wanted to stay near the owners when they were smiling than when they were not in the mood.

The situation was completely different when 12 cats spent time with strangers, not their owners. In this situation, they showed the same positive behavior regardless of whether the person was smiling or frowning.

The acquired results show 2 things: cats can read facial expression inhabitant of our planet and learn this feature for a long time.

It was previously known that expression of the planet is excellent reading dogs. And this is the 1st convincing evidence that cats have similar abilities.

However, this does not mean that cats are capable of empathy to us. It is more likely that they learned to associate the smile private owners with awards or with the impossibility of "repression".

It seems however, research has shown that cats are finely ready to recognize aspects of human gestures and is not as indifferent as we thought. Researchers have come to more thorough conclusions: cats are interested in us.

The difference between the joy of dogs and cats respond to human emotions can be explained by the fact that dogs were domesticated even earlier. To the best knowledge of genetic research, the results of which were announced in the current quarter, the process of domestication of dogs began more than 30,000 years ago, however, the cat began to tame for 20,000 years later. More brilliant answers dogs on our emotional gestures could occur only because they had more time to adapt to life with people, reports the BBC.